This transference is ambivalent: it comprises positive as well as negative attitudes towards the analyst, who as a rule is put in the place of one or other of the patient's parents, his father or mother. “ Freud, “An Outline of Psychoanalysis” 1940.
Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and negatively valenced components.
Ambivalence is a psychological state in which people are being torn between “one side” and the “other side” when making evaluations. This dynamic aspect of ambivalence is hard to capture in response times or self-report based measures of ambivalence.
These children were later identified as anxious-ambivalent. A child with an ambivalent attachment style might try to stay close to their parent by “up-regulating” their actions. This might mean becoming distressed, angry, and throwing a temper tantrum when separated from their caregiver.
For example, you may feel ambivalent about going out on Friday night. Although on one hand it would be fun to hang out with your friends, on the other hand it would be nice to save money by staying in and resting. The ambivalence is the conflicting feelings about the two desirable situations.
Ambivalent or anxious-preoccupied attachment style
As the labels suggest, people with this attachment style are often anxious and uncertain, lacking in self-esteem. They crave emotional intimacy but worry that others don't want to be with them.
Many psychologists and social scientists report that certain personality traits tend to be associated with the ambivalent stance, such as obsessive compulsive tendencies, unhealthy psychological defensive styles (such as splitting), and underdeveloped problem solving skills.
In an ambivalent relationship, neither the positive nor the negative predominates; your feelings about the person are decidedly mixed. Sometimes this person is encouraging, and sometimes they're critical. Sometimes they're fun, and sometimes they're a drag. Sometimes they're there for you, and sometimes they're not.
Transference is often (though not always) the culprit when you feel triggered, emotionally hurt, or misunderstood in a therapy session. One tell-tale sign of transference is when your feelings or reactions seem bigger than they should be. You don't just feel frustrated, you feel enraged.
These people tend to see both the positive and negative sides to things, and feel conflicted about many topics. In psychological terms, they are high in 'trait ambivalence', defined as a tendency to experience more ambivalence about more issues.
One of the most common signs of relationship ambivalence is feeling distant or disconnected from your partner. This could manifest in many ways, including one person not wanting to spend time with the other, avoiding physical intimacy, or not having the same communication as before.
First, ambivalence is most strongly linked to internal conflict when conflict between the attitudes is chronically accessible and among individuals higher in preference for consistency (Newby-Clark et al. 2002).
The prefix ambi- means "both," and the -valent and -valence parts ultimately derive from the Latin verb valēre, meaning "to be strong." Not surprisingly, an ambivalent person is someone who has strong feelings on more than one side of a question or issue.
Ambivalence is the term for having mixed feelings about something. Doctors once considered it a key symptom of schizophrenia, but this is no longer the case.
Ambivalent attachment styles typically result from children who experienced caregivers in their earliest years who were inconsistent in their affection, emotional availability, and care. This creates a dynamic of not knowing what to expect from caregivers and, subsequently, not trusting them—or others.
Ambivalent Attachment In Adults
Like the ambivalent child, the ambivalent adult may consistently seek attention from the desired person. Once they get the attention they crave, they may reject the person and then repeat the process.
Definition. Ambivalent attachment is a form of insecure attachment characterized by inconsistent responses of the caregivers and by the child's feelings of anxiety and preoccupation about the caregiver's availability.
You're also not using the word ambivalent with its established meaning. Being ambivalent doesn't mean you don't care, it means you have contradictory or mixed feelings about it. You do care—and you're torn.
Ambivalence over emotional expression (AEE) refers to an internal conflict of expressing one's positive or negative feelings in fear of negative consequences from exhibiting such expression (16).
People with an ambivalent attachment style or anxious attachment style may become overly obsessed with the relationship, which results in self-sabotage over time. Their relationships tend to break down as a result of their clinginess and their over-fixation on real or perceived problems.